The Third Borune Dynasty went on and on; that, all by itself, strongly hinted that something important was in the wind. The Mrin was fairly specific about the fact that the Godslayer’s wife was going to be a Borune princess.

Things had begun to deteriorate in Arendia. The peace we’d imposed on Asturia and Mimbre by marrying Mayaserana to Korodullin began to come apart at the seams, largely, I think, because the Mimbrates refused to recognize the titles of the Asturian nobility. That offended the hotheaded Asturians, and there were any number of ugly incidents during the fiftieth century.

Prosperity returned to Sendaria when the yearly Algar cattle-drives to Muros resumed. The limited trade on the Isle of the Winds was re-established, but foreign merchants were still not allowed inside the city of Riva. The Ulgos didn’t change at all, but Ulgos never do. The Tolnedran merchant princes in Tol Honeth had looked upon the Ulgo participation in the war against Kal Torak as a good sign, hoping that the Ulgos might loosen some of their restrictions on trade. The Ulgos, however, went back to Prolgu, descended into their caves, and slammed the door behind them.

The Nyissans grew increasingly sulky, since their economy was largely based on the slave trade, and when there are no battles, there aren’t any new slaves. Nyissans always pout during an extended period of peace.

Korzeth had completed the reunification of Mallorea - sort of. He delivered a nominally unified empire to his son, but the actual business of welding Mallorea together was accomplished by the Melcene bureaucracy and its policy of including all the subject people in the government.

Kell, like Ulgoland, didn’t change.

Since nothing was really going on, I had the chance to return to my studies, and I rediscovered something that’s always aggravated me. It takes a considerable amount of time to reactivate your brain after you’ve been away from your studies for a while. Study is a very intensive activity, and if you lay it aside for a bit, you have to learn how all over again. I know that it’s going to happen every time, and that’s why I get irritable when something comes up that drags me away from what is, after all, my primary occupation. The long period of relative peace and tranquility gave me about three hundred and fifty years of uninterrupted study time, and I accomplished quite a bit.

Did you really want me to break off at this point to give you an extended lecture on number theory or the principles of literary criticism?

I didn’t really think you would, so why don’t we just lay those things aside and press on with this great work that we are in?

I think it was sometime in the middle of the fifty-third century - 5249 or 5250 - when I completed something I’d been working on for twenty years or so and decided that it might not be a bad idea for me to go out and have a look around. I slipped down into Cthol Murgos and looked in on Ctuchik.

That’s all I did - just look. He appeared to be busy with his assorted amusements - some obscene, and some merely disgusting - so I didn’t bother him.

Then I went on south from Rak Cthol to see if I could locate the cave where Zedar was keeping his comatose Master. I didn’t have much trouble finding it, because Beldin was sitting on top of a ridge just across the rocky gorge from it. It didn’t look as if he’d moved for several decades. ‘Did you kill Ctuchik yet?’ he asked me after I’d shed my feathers.

‘Beldin,’ I said in a pained tone of voice, ‘why is that always your first answer to any problem?’

‘I’m a simple man, Belgarath,’ he replied, reaching out his gnarled hand with surprising swiftness, snatching up an unwary lizard, and eating it alive. ‘Killing things is always the simplest answer to problems.’

‘Just because it’s simple doesn’t mean that it’s the best way,’ I told him. ‘No, as a matter of fact, I didn’t kill Ctuchik. The twins have been getting some hints out of the Mrin that we’ll need him later, and I’m not going to do anything to get in the way of things that have to happen.’ I looked across the gorge. ‘Is Zedar still in that cave with One-eye?’

‘No. He left a few years back.’

‘Why are you setting down roots here, then?’

‘Because it’s altogether possible that Torak’ll be the first to know when the Godslayer arrives. That might be all the warning we’ll get when things start coming to a head. I’ll let you know when the side of that mountain over there blows out.’

‘Have you any idea of where Zedar went?’

‘I can’t do everything, Belgarath. I’ll watch Torak; Zedar’s your problem. What have you been up to lately?’

‘I proved that three and three make six,’ I replied proudly.

‘That took you three centuries? I could have proved that with a handful of dried beans.’

‘But not mathematically, Beldin. Empirical evidence doesn’t really prove anything, because the investigator might be crazy. Certainty exists only in pure mathematics.’

‘And if you accidentally turn your equation upside down, will that make all of us suddenly fly off the face of the earth?’

‘Probably not.’

‘Forgive me, brother, but I’d much rather trust empirical evidence. I might be a little crazy now and then, but I’ve seen some of the answers you come up with when you try to add up a column of figures.’

I shrugged. ‘Nobody’s perfect.’ I moved around to the upwind side of him. ‘How long’s it been since you’ve had a bath?’

‘I couldn’t say. When’s the last time it rained around here?’

‘This is a desert, Beldin. It can go for years without raining here.’

‘So? I’ve always felt that too much bathing weakens you. Go on home, Belgarath. I’m trying to work something out.’

‘Oh? What’s that?’

‘I’m trying to distinguish the difference between “right” and “good”.’

‘Why?’

He shrugged. ‘I’m interested, that’s all. It keeps my mind occupied while I’m waiting for my next bath. Go find Zedar, Belgarath, and quit pestering me. I’m busy.’

To be quite honest about it, though, I wasn’t particularly interested in Zedar’s location. Torak’s condition made Zedar largely irrelevant. I circulated around in the kingdoms of the west instead, looking in on those families I’d been nurturing for all these centuries. Lelldorin’s family was at Wildantor, and they were deeply involved in various crackpot schemes against the Mimbrates. The baron of Vo Mandor, Mandorallen’s grandfather, was busy picking fights with his neighbors, usually on spurious grounds. Hettar’s clan was raising horses, preparing, although they didn’t realize it, for the coming of the Horse-Lord. Durnik’s grandfather was a village blacksmith, and Relg’s was a religious fanatic who spent most of this time admiring his own purity. I had no idea of where Taiba’s family was, and I lost a lot of sleep about that. I knew that her family was someplace in the world, but I’d completely lost track of them after the Tolnedran invasion of Maragor.

I stopped by Tol Honeth before I went north to visit Drasnia and Cherek. I always like to keep an eye on the Borunes. The man on the throne at that time was Ran Borune XXI, who, as it turned out, was Ce’Nedra’s great-grandfather. I’ve mentioned the tendency of Tolnedrans to marry their cousins several times in the past, I think, and Ran Borune XXI was no exception. The Dryad strain in the Borune family always breeds true in female children, and the men of the family are absolutely captivated by Dryads. I think it’s in their blood.

Anyway, Ce’Nedra’s great-grandfather was forty or so when I stopped by the palace, and his wife, Ce’Lanne, had flaming red hair and a disposition to match. She made the emperor’s life very exciting, I understand.

Tolnedrans were still keeping alive the fiction that my name was some obscure Alorn title, and the scholars of history at the university had concocted a wild theory about a ‘Brotherhood of Sorcerers’ out of whole cloth. Some chance remark by Beldin or one of the twins had probably given rise to that, and the creative historians expanded on it. We were supposed to be some sort of religious order, I guess. One imaginative pedant even went so far as to suggest that the enmity between my brothers and me and Torak’s disciples was the result of a schism within the order at some time in the distant past.

I never bothered to correct all those wild misconceptions because they helped me to gain access to whichever Borune or Honethite or Vorduvian currently held the throne, and that saved a lot of time.

It was winter when I reached Tol Honeth and presented myself at the palace. Winters are not particularly severe in Tol Honeth, so at least I hadn’t been obliged to plow through snowdrifts on my way to the imperial presence.

‘And so you’re Ancient Belgarath,’ Ran Borune said when I was presented to him.

‘That’s what they tell me, your Majesty,’ I replied.

‘I’ve always wondered about that title,’ he said. Like all the Borunes, he was a small man, and his massive throne made him look just a bit ridiculous. ‘Tell me, Ancient One, is the title “Belgarath” hereditary, or were you and your predecessors chosen by lot or the auguries?’